Mensch At Once Outrageous, Trite And Lazy

There is no doubt that Vince Rhomberg, executive director and founder of Public Theatre, possesses one of South Florida theater's most bewildering talents.

Lyricist, composer, playwright, administrator and visionary, his career has often been restless and unfocused.

His taste for innovation fostered Public Theatre's annual Gay and Lesbian Play Festival. The festival has never been exploitative or prurient, although comedy has been the event's mainstay.

He has also relied on ethnic plays to help expand the theater's box office.

He has never been reluctant to use unknown playwrights whose names appear on premiere works and then vanish.

Rhomberg's 1999 theater season is a mix of ethnic and gay themes, opening with A Mensch for Mrs. Mendelbaum.

Rhomberg not only wrote the play, which he calls "a romantic comedy," he also directed and produced it and designed the set and lighting.

Clearly Rhomberg intends Mensch as an outrageous romp, and in that sense it succeeds. But as far as making sense, it simply doesn't.

The comedy is set in Ray's Deli, Pompano Beach, the hangout of Molly Mendelbaum (Lainie Lewis), a renowned author of Fabio-style romance novels.

Molly is in the midst of a midlife crisis and aspires to a writing style more compatible with her age. Older women can find love too, she decides. Sylvia (Carolyn Gordon), her agent, disagrees and challenges her to prove her point.

Molly allows her imagination to run amok (as does Rhomberg his), summoning up lover candidates in her mind that include a robed lifeguard who flashes her, an ardent tennis player and even Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. All bear a remarkable resemblance to deli owner Ray (Harvey Lasky, in a series of quick changes).

The deli waitress -- who disses the food, of course -- is played by Tina Bayne. She slips a love potion she obtained in Israel into the deli's coffee. Chaos ensues.

Love potions are the laziest, most antiquated catalyst to incite comedy, and it shows as Mensch sinks deeper into physical, not-so-comic, overwrought high jinks.

Bill von Maurer covered theater for more than a decade for The Miami News and is a frequent contributor to the Sun-Sentinel.